Unfixable
by Flywoman Returns
Summary: On some level at least, you must have always known. Spoilers for "Lockdown."


Disclaimer: These characters belong to Fox and to David Shore and his talented colleagues. I am borrowing them for personal pleasure, not financial gain. Please don't sue.

Thanks: To Chris H. for the lemons.

The music ends, and she is still in your arms, gazing up at you with those fiercely intelligent eyes that have always laid you bare without even trying. She says something about never having really had a proper goodbye, and she kisses you, on the cheek, lingering a little with the false promise of an eternity of tenderness. And then (because you know that this _is_ goodbye), you lean forward, tentatively, and after a second's hesitation she meets you halfway, and a sort of sad arousal flares as your lips touch, once, twice, three times, her hand shifting to clasp the back of your neck, before she pulls back and _looks_ at you, then turns and walks away.

And your heart is suddenly a leaden weight, hauling up a gulp and a sigh as it plummets towards your shoes, because you are sure that she is going to walk out that door and you are never going to see her again, and even if this is the only way that this story can end, you would give anything for it to end just a little later. But then you see that she has taken hold of the handle, yet she is not leaving, only locking the door, and then turning to you with an unspoken question: _What about this, Robert? Do you miss this?_

So you move towards her as she leans against the door with a shy schoolgirl grin, hands behind her back, invitation in her eyes, and you know that your colleagues would think you were crazy if they found out, but you wrap your arms around her, grateful for one more opportunity, even if it is the last-

Because _this_, this has always been good-

Starting with that first, unexpected, astonishing time, when you made her moan so loudly that her neighbors banged on the walls and threatened to telephone the police, and afterwards you worried that it was only because she'd been so strung out on meth that _anyone_ could have done it, and you just happened to be handy-

But those doubts were belied by the second time, after she told you that she only wanted to have sex with you because you were the last co-worker with whom she was likely to fall in love, and instead of running the other way like any rational person would have done, you followed her back to your own apartment and drowned in her intoxicating sweetness like the strawberry daiquiri that you'd always desired but could never have-

And every one of the times after that, sneaking into the sleep lab, squeezing into the janitor's closet, sweating through the seat cushions of your sofa, eventually baptizing your own matrimonial bed-

Because you _fit_ together, every molecule of your body aligning perfectly with hers, but your mistake lay in thinking that this communion symbolized something deeper and more enduring than what House would probably call coincidental biochemical compatibility (in one of his better moods).

So you run your hands over the familiar curves of her body as she clutches at you like a shipwreck survivor, your mouths meeting hungrily, your blood pounding in your ears. You stumble with her over to the exam table, the only likely bed in the room, shedding clothes as you go, yanking a thin woven blanket from a cabinet to spread over the cold, tacky vinyl. You suck at her tongue and at her hard little nipples, stroke her damp curls, push into her at last with the pent-up longing of months.

And when you are lying there entangled afterwards, limp and flushed, you finally have a chance to think back on all your years together, and you have to admit that if you allowed yourself to be blindsided, it was your own damned fault. Her cruel, compassionate mouth said _yes_ and _no_ both, every step of the way, and you were a fool to think that your certainty could compensate for her doubts. On some level at least, you must have always known.

So you think that in a day or two or five, you'll have to admit to yourself that she was wrong about one thing, that Allison is not the only person in this room who is unfixable.

And you know that you will never, ever tell anyone about this, especially Foreman (although you suspect, for some reason, that House might actually understand).

"I'm not going to get too sentimental  
like those other sticker valentines,  
'cause I don't know if you are loving some body.  
I only know it isn't mine."

-Elvis Costello


End file.
